Ep. 308 – You Are Love

And once you start to enter that space of looking behind the veils of individual difference to see the unity, see there's only one of it, you begin to experience that you are with your beloved in all these multitude of forms, some of which are suffering intensely, some of which are joyful, some of which are awakening, some of which are asleep. And you shift gears. You no longer try to collect love. You just are in love with everybody. In love is the last stop on the train of dualism before you enter into nibbāna, where you become love and you are no longer experiencing the experience of loving. You are love. And that is inevitable and irrevocable. That is the journey you are on, whether you like it or not. It is a journey. As Trungpa Rinpoche said, enlightenment is the ego's ultimate disappointment.

Welcome to another episode of Here and Now with Ram Dass. This is episode 308. You Are Love. This is the second half of a talk he gave at the LA Whole Life Expo in February of 1989. If you haven't heard the first half, go check it out, episode 307, then come back and check out this second half. Here he talks about love, how most of us walk around as if it's rationed. We find someone who makes us feel alive, and then we hold on for dear life. But he says, maybe that's deprivation. Maybe that's not love. And he reminds us that we are so much more than who we think we are. Yes, we are human, but we are also divine, and we move between those planes. And when we do, we can treat our whole life like curriculum. We can stop fearing that we will lose love and instead know that we are made of it this whole time. These are just a few of the threads of the themes that lie ahead But Ram Dass used to say that inner work and the work of actually showing up for people were the same thing. And someone from the Omega Institute once asked him what mattered most for an organization like theirs to be doing. And his answer— maybe it's the same for us— his answer was compassion, the kind you practice on your own heart first, because that is the only way it reaches a marriage, a friendship, people in the checkout line. That energy, that sweetness, you can still feel that same spirit at Omega Institute. You just go, you're in the woods for a few days, you're with teachers, you're doing the unglamorous work of learning how to be with yourself and one another. And whether the subject for the week is healing or grief or making something with your own hands, you find that depth and connection. So go check them out. Go to eomega.org. That's the letter E, omega.org and find out what's coming up. For us now, it's the Hotel Ballroom in LA, February 1989. Ram Dass telling us more about love and being love. Here is Ram Dass, here and now.

This is Ram Dass. And the show is called Here and Now with Ram Dass. So as you settle into other planes as more familiar and finally being at home more, then you can embrace your humanity more deeply and then go in and play with all of the suffering and joy and pleasure and pain and happiness and sadness. As long as I thought this was the only home and those things were flights of grace, I was afraid of the intensity of the suffering that exists on this plane. Because there is so much of it inherent in the human condition that I was afraid to open my heart to it fully for fear I would drown. But there are planes of reality where when you look at this plane from these other places, you see that this is absolutely perfect. That it's absolutely exquisite law unfolding. I mean perfect in the sense of law unfolding, not good, but perfect. It is perfectly lawful. It's the way it is. It's the way, as the Tao calls it, the way. And that before you judge it, you want to appreciate it. You want to understand the way Like, I work with people that are dying of this and that. Everybody dies of this or that. So some of them are dying of cancer and some of AIDS and some of age. I just died with my father this September. He died at 90 of age or whatever. What I see is that these people suffer and suffer and suffer, and then at some moment it just gets more than their will and they let go. And the minute they let go, it's like you tapped an eggshell and it opens, and this beautiful being emerges that's absolutely radiant and at peace and present and light. And they know themselves vaguely. I mean, it's as if they're meeting an old friend because it's who they truly were. But it was covered over by this thing that was so crusty that it took the hammer of the truth of death to break through it. So when I've seen that again and again, am I to say that the suffering was bad because the suffering was part of that process of breaking that shell. And when you understand that, that what we're doing on Earth is awakening out of the, the illusion that we are exclusively separate so that we can regain a balance in the— that the universe has between our separateness and our unity. And that once you see that, then you see your life as your curriculum and you see the relationships. Now we can see— talk about relationships. You see relationships as part of the curriculum of coming to God. Once my guru said to us, He was talking to a girl who had fallen in love with a fellow who was of dubious merit. And he said to her, don't you realize your only friend is God? And that stuck with me a lot. Your only friend is God. In fact, ultimately, you only meet God. And that everything, everybody here is God in drag. See, everybody here is God being busy. They're thinking they are their manifestation. And if you talk to them as God, they're confused because they identify so much with the manifestation. Here are some fun things. This is Kabir. Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat. My shoulder is against yours. You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals, not in masses, no kirtans, nor in legs winding around your own neck. No, nor in eating nothing but vegetables. When you really look for me, you will see me instantly. You will find me in the tiniest house of time. Kabir says, student, tell me, what is God? It is the breath inside the breath. One more by Kabir. Since the day when I met with my Lord, there has been no end to the sport of our love. I see with eyes open and smile and behold his beauty everywhere. I utter his name, and whatever I see, it reminds me of him. Whatever I do, it becomes his worship. Wherever I go, I move round him. All I achieve is his service. When I lie down, I lie prostrate at his feet. Whether I rise or sit down, I can never forget him, for the rhythm of his music beats in my ears. Everywhere you look is the beloved. Everybody you meet is the beloved. The person in the bank, the one in the supermarket, your child, the relative you get along with the least. It's all God's saying, "Psst, you see me in here? Or is my costume so entrancing you that you can't find me?" This is a poem by Charles Cosley on a Norman crucifix, 1632. This is the Christian side of it. I am the great sun, but you do not see me. I am your husband, but you turn away. I am the captive, but you do not free me. I am the captain you will not obey. I am the truth, but you will not believe me. I am the city where you will not stay. I am your wife, your child, but you will leave me. I am that God to whom you will not pray. I am your counsel, but you do not hear me. I am the lover whom you will betray. I am the victor, but you do not cheer me. I am the Holy Dove whom you will slay. I am your life, but if you will not name me, seal up your soul with tears and never blame me. And that's what this plane has been about. We have sealed up our soul with tears. And fears. And then we start to awaken, and we push out, and then we get comfortable in the universe, in the cosmos, and then we become comfortable everywhere until we are at home in the universe. And every relationship is yoga. Every relationship is a vehicle to come to union, to see behind the veil. Recently I was in Nepal. I'm with an organization called the Seva Foundation. We handed out some stuff I brought, carried on the airplane with me. And Seva is an absolutely superb organization. It's got Wavy Gravy the Clown in it who says If you don't have a sense of humor, it just isn't funny. At any rate, we have a rotating chairmanship, and I was chairman of the board at one point. It's been going for about 10 years. It's great. We work in Nepal and India with blind and Guatemala and now Nicaragua and with the American Indians. Through Women of All Red Nation. And so I was in Nepal working with the Nepalese government around this big blindness project that we're doing in Nepal, or that we're helping the Nepalese do. Actually, we're finally learning developmental wisdom. So I was meeting with the Minister of Health and I was the chairman of the board. And we sat down and he had his entourage and I had my entourage. I had my tie on, my blue blazer, and I was Dr. Das. And I was a little nervous because, you know, I haven't played establishment for years. And it's like, you know, and I was like being establishment and he was being the minister and we were about to bargain. I wanted the bureaucracy to loosen up a little and he wanted some money from a foundation from America. And just as we were about— and I was getting a little nervous and caught in my role— I happened to look into his eyes and there he was looking back at me. Are you there? I'm here. What are you doing in that? It's like you've just met your lover again, but it's in the form of a minister of health. What are you going to do about that? And the minute we recognize one another, then the whole dance changed. Then minister of health and chairman of the boardness were like the iron and the thimble in Monopoly. You know, they were the symbols you use to play on the board. And we, we, we fought fiercely on this plane, but we were established in the other plane so that the more we fought and disagreed and bargained— and he was a tough bargainer and I was a tough bargainer— the closer we came together. So that the bargaining brought us into love. It was a form of making love. And I look around and I say, which of my relationships is not a form of making love? Because if I can find that, that should be interesting, because that's obviously a place where I'm holding, where I will not see the beloved in that disguise. And what I've found now is that when I cannot get caught in the melodrama that's unfolding before me, I can keep meeting the beings that are on the stage. And my mind, if I work on it, can become an environment in which they can come out of their suffering if they choose. I have no moral right to ask them to or to impose or to do anything to them. All I can do is work on myself to not get caught in the conspiracy of their mind so I can be an environment where if they would like to let go of who they think they are, they're welcome. And if not, fine. Can you hear that? It's like if I go into the bank and walk up to the teller, the question is, who do I see? Now I can see teller, I can see sexual identity, I can see social cultural role, I can see a person that I've seen in the bank before, a nice person. I can look back and see a soul that has taken birth and is living out Tellerdom. Or I can go back one more and just see it is God at play with infinite variety of faces. And I've learned from the '60s, you learn, you don't say, I know you're God, because her hand reaches for the button, you know. Because you don't bust anybody's cover. My absolutely favorite story, which is just the best story I think I've had to use in 20 years, was that in '69 or '70 when I came back from— am I talking? Are you still here? Yeah. I came back from India and I was so far out. In those days. I mean, I hadn't been talking for 6 months. I'd been writing on a slate and I was in a completely non-sexual environment so that all— what happened, all that energy, it all went to my forehead and I was like, you know, I was like a beacon, like a coal miner, you know? And I was— first lecture I gave was at Wesleyan University, or one of the first. And I started at 7:30 at night and a quarter of 4 in the morning, it was still going and nobody had moved. I mean, I was just— so I came back from India and I was in this very high state and I was driving across the United States in— I had an old antique Buick limousine I'd made into a camper, and I was driving in this 6,000-pound car and I was planning to go gently across the United States. And I was sitting with one leg under me and I was driving along singing the names of God because what else is there to do? So I pick different names and I just sing to God. And so I was singing to Krishna at this moment. Krishna is a blue being, you know, blue cowherd's boy. And I was just going along in ecstasy, just keeping enough consciousness on this plane to keep the car on the road. And I became aware of a blue light But it was in the rearview mirror and, and it was a state trooper. And so I pulled over and he came up to the car and he said, may I see your license and registration, please? Now, see, I had gotten so far out there that I knew who this was. I mean, Christ came as a carpenter. Why wouldn't Krishna come as a state trooper? I mean, I don't see anything unreal about that. You know, it seemed very reasonable to me, but I wasn't going to blow his cover, you know. So I handed him my license and registration and he walked around the car and he checked me out, you know, and called Central and did whatever he does. And then he came back and he explained to me that I was going too slow on a freeway. And that, and that, you know about that, and that I should use ancillary roads if I wanted to go that slow. And now all the time I'm looking at him. Can you imagine if God was at your window, what it would look like and how you would be? I mean, I was doing the form, but I was like in love. It was like You know, I was just— I loved him so much that, you know, that his problem was that when he finished with his rap, he didn't want to go away because he had probably never been loved like that before, at least not in his uniform. So there was a moment of silence. I expected him to pick up his flute at that moment. And he said, "Great car you've got here." So, yeah, what he did was he found another safe way to keep the COVID because we could then do that kind of macho spitting and kicking the fenders and saying they don't make them like they used to and talk about straight eights and slant sixes and, you know, Talk that talk, talk, you know. And so we ran that one through and I'd have him— I'd live with him, you know, I didn't care. I wasn't going anywhere. Finally, he ran out of things he could do unless he was going to give up his cover, you know. So he said, be gone with you, which is, you know, that's not state trooper talk, but we'll let it slide by, you know. So I got it. I started the car and I was— he had walked. I drove, started to drive away, and I looked in the rearview mirror and he was standing by his Trooper Mobile and he was, he was waving. And I thought, oh, come on now, you know, state troopers don't wave. I mean, when somebody comes to me and they are positive and they are— they have KS or pneumocystis, they've had an attack and they They are in a drama that is so thick, it is so seductive that they are desperate to find somebody not sucked in by it because it awakens everybody right where they live, which is the fear of death. And what can you offer such a person? I mean, if you have skills, you can offer that. You can relieve their suffering and pain if you can, with whatever, with massage, with medication, with friendship. But I realize that what I can offer those people is to work on myself, using that situation to work on myself so that I can be present in it without getting lost in it, so that if they would like to let go of the drama of being somebody with AIDS, My mind isn't going to keep them stuck in it. That's what we can offer each other. We offer each other not pegging each other, not demanding that you be the same person you were yesterday. I know you. There was a moment when Gandhi was leading the march. He was leading a march against the British. And people had left their work and made great sacrifice to follow him. And after about 2 days, I guess he saw there was going to be some violence and he stopped the march. And his lieutenants came up and they said, Mahatma Ji, you can't stop the march. These people expect you to go on. And Gandhi said, only God is absolute truth. I unfortunately still am caught in my humanness and I only know relative truth. And my understanding of truth changes from day to day, and my commitment must be to truth, not to consistency. I'm sorry. Just think about it. Think of what price efficiency in the game we're playing, the efficiency of being who you were yesterday to be consistent for everybody around you. So that you squeeze into this little box a familiar entity, a somebody, when you really aren't that somebody exclusively. That's just another one of your faces. And the people you know the best, maybe they know 3 or 4 of the multitude of entities you are. You and I are unfathomable in the terms of the number of beings we are. If you see what happened when Arjuna saw Krishna, he said, show me who you are. And Krishna manifested as thousands of faces and eating armies and armies and suns and moons and earths. At one point, Krishna, when in the baby form of Gopal, was being nursed by his mother, and at one moment he let her— the veil fall away and she saw him and she saw— she saw he yawned and she saw in his mouth the universes and she freaked. And it said, and then he veiled her eyes out of compassion. He once again veiled her eyes with the veil of mother love, and she saw her baby. To me, relationship is giving each other the chance to come up for air. My relationships are to relieve the suffering that exists in me and other people and to delight in the play of form. What I've had to learn is what happens when you move from a deprivation model out of it, when you have felt deprived of love because you haven't been connected to the place in you where the love is, into your compassionate heart, where the light is, where your truth is. And then you meet somebody, and that somebody, because of the particular profile of their karmic DNA code, they release something in you and you say, I am in love. They allow you to come into the space of love. But what happens for most people, because they're working on a deprivation model, is the minute they taste it, they get frightened they're going to lose it again and they try to possess it. And the way they try to possess it is by trying to possess their connection, as any good addict knows. So you meet somebody and you feel that feeling and you say, I am in love with you. And then you say, where will you be Thursday night? And where will you be Friday night? And where will you be for the rest of my life? And let's nest because you don't want to lose it. But now let's say that you and I, through some peculiar set of environmental conditions, there was a mass opening of that place inside of ourselves, but we didn't know it because we're still our old selves who think we're starving for love. So you look at somebody and you're in love with them and you go to collect them and you collect them, you take them home and you make a nest of straw and drapes and things. And then you go to the supermarket to get some tofu and beer, and you're at the checkout counter and you look into the eyes of the person at the checkout counter and it happens again. That is not unfamiliar in this audience. What do you do then? A ménage à trois. And what then? I mean, you might look at somebody else. Have you begun to consider that the possibility is that what you're seeing is what you are? Because once you realize that from now on, everybody you see is going to be your lover, You can't collect them anymore. There's just no room in the inn. So you go from let's nest to let me get your telephone number in case, you know, to are you experiencing what I am? Hi. To, to to nothing. That the reactivity to the recognition of the moment of love is not something that you have to do that grossly any longer in order to keep doing it. You don't have to keep reassuring each other. You just can be present in love. And once you start to enter that space of looking behind the veils of individual difference to see see the unity, see there's only one of it, you begin to experience that you are with your beloved in all these multitude of forms, some of which are suffering intensely, some of which are joyful, some of which are awakening, some of which are asleep. And you shift gears. You no longer try to collect. Love. You just are in love with everybody. In love is the last stop on the train of dualism before you enter into nirvana, where you become love and you are no longer experiencing the experience of loving. You are love, and that is inevitable and irrevocable. That is the journey you are on, whether you like it or not. It is a journey. As Trungpa Rinpoche said, enlightenment is the ego's ultimate disappointment. A young boy traveled across Japan to the school of a famous martial artist. When he arrived at the dojo, he was given an audience by the sensei. What do you wish from me? The master asked. 'I wish to be your student and become the finest karateka in the land,' the boy replied. 'How long must I study?' '10 years at least,' the master answered. '10 years is a long time,' said the boy. 'What if I study twice as hard as all your other students?' '20 years,' replied the master. '20 years? What if I practice day and night with all my effort?' '30 years,' was the master's reply. How is it that each time I say I will work harder, you tell me that it will take longer? The answer is clear. When one— when one eye is fixed upon your destination, there is only one eye left with which to find the way. That's where trying is at. That's what about right effort. Right effort is really right effort. It's not trying. I was with Trungpa Rinpoche once and he was teaching me a meditation and we sat down and he said, now just expand outward. And I— we— he said, let's do it together. And we started expanding. He said, Ram Dass, are you trying? But yeah, I'm trying. He says, no, Ram Dass, don't try. Just expand outward. Ah, ah. When you're young at the game of awakening, like we still are, it's nice to have the little tree, as Ramakrishna said, surrounded by a fence to protect it from being stepped on. And it's great to have satsang or sangha or have a group like this around where you can speak your heart and people say, yeah, because it's their heart as well. That's great. That's a great luxury. But don't underestimate how tough the truth is, that the validity of what you have experienced that makes you want to even sit in this room at this moment, that can withstand anything. You are always afraid of what your price will be. But you need not fear, because once you align with truth, it is inevitable that ultimately you will awaken to it again, even after you forget over and over. So while it's a luxury to have satsang and sangha, it is not necessary. The basic institution that gets enlightened is the individual human heart. Each of us is on a journey to God, and the evolution is individual by individual. The fact that a lot of us may be experiencing the same thing at the same moment is an interesting astral configuration, but it still comes down to the work each of us has on ourselves.

The Ram Dass Here and Now Podcast is brought to you by Be Here Now Network and ramdass.org. We appreciate you listening. You can support the preservation of Ram Dass's legacy by joining our Patreon. There you can find every episode of the Ram Dass Here and Now Podcast ad-free, as well as commentary-free episodes of each episode, and guided practices from Ram Dass and friends Visit patreon.com/ramdaspodcast for a free week trial.